by Premchand
The representatives began entreating now. ‘We will not leave Your Majesty’s side, we will slit our throats with our knives and lay down our lives at your feet. Those wicked people who troubled you, there’s not a trace of them now! We will never again allow them to raise their heads. We only need your protection.’
Cutting them short Nadir said, ‘Gentlemen, if you wish to make me the emperor of Iran with this intention, then pardon me. During my sojourns I have carefully observed the empire’s condition and reached the conclusion that its state is far worse than other kingdoms. They deserve pity. In Iran I never had such opportunities. I would survey my kingdom through the eyes of my courtiers. Don’t expect me to rob the people to line your pockets. This I cannot take upon my head. I will balance the scales of justice and on this condition alone will I be ready to go to Iran.’
Laila smiled and said, ‘You can forgive the people their trespasses because they do not have any enmity with you. Their teeth were into me. How can I forgive that?’
Nadir said gravely, ‘Laila, I cannot believe that I am hearing such words from your mouth.’
The visitors thought, ‘What is the use of inciting him now? This can be dealt with after reaching Iran. A couple of spies can in the name of the people create such turbulence that all his beliefs will be overturned in no time.’ One of the spokesmen said, ‘Praise be to the lord! What is Your Majesty suggesting? Are we so naive that we will make Your Grace stray from the path of righteousness? Justice alone is an emperor’s gem and it is our heartfelt desire that your justice puts even the just emperor Nausherawan to shame. Our sole intention was to ensure that we never allow the empire to offend Your Majesty’s dignity in future. We will be ready to lay down our lives for Your Majesty.’
All at once it seemed as if nature had become entirely melodious. Mountains and trees, the stars and the moon, air and water, all began to sing the same note. In the pure lustre of the moonlight, in the force of the wind, strains of music wafted forth. Laila beat upon her tambourine and sang. That day it dawned that melody alone was the essence of creation. Goddesses emerged to twirl on the mountaintops, the gods danced in the skies. Music designed a whole new world.
From the day the people had created that uproar at the palace doors and urged that Laila be banished, there had been a radical change in her thoughts. She had learnt to sympathize with people from the moment of her birth itself. Whenever she would see the royal officials committing atrocities on the poor people her tender heart would be filled with agony. She began to loathe wealth, fame and luxury, for which people had to undergo so much pain. She wanted to summon such inner strength that it would pierce the tyrants’ hearts with compassion and the hearts of the people with fearlessness. Her innocent imagination would place her on a throne where her liberal policies would establish a new era. How many nights she had spent dreaming of this! How many times had she wept sitting beside the victims of injustice. But just when she imagined that her golden dreams were becoming a reality, she was subjected to a new, cruel experience. She perceived that people were not as tolerant, needy or frail as she had thought. On the contrary, superficiality, inconsideration and incivility were present in them in far greater measure. They did not value goodness, did not know how to put power to good use. That day her heart turned against the people.
The day Nadir and Laila once again stepped into Tehran, the entire city came out to welcome them. Terror loomed large over the city; from every corner the sound of piteous cries was heard. In the neighbourhood of the rich, fair fortune cavorted around, while the quarter of the poor was desolate. It was heartbreaking to see them. Nadir burst into tears, but on Laila’s lips a cynical smile could be glimpsed.
There was now a formidable problem before Nadir. He always saw that whatever he wanted to do never happened, and what he did not wish for occurred. The reason for that was Laila, but he could not utter a word. Laila would interfere in everything he did. Whatever he designed for the benefit and benediction of the people was hindered by some obstacle put up by Laila and he was left with no option but to remain silent. Once he had renounced the throne for Laila. Thereafter strife had put Laila to the test. In those days of distress, what he had experienced of Laila’s personality had been so pleasing, so charming that he had become enslaved to Laila. She alone was his paradise; to be engrossed in her love alone was his prime desire. For this Laila he could do anything. People and the empire were of no significance before Laila.
In this way three years passed, and the people’s condition worsened every day.
9
One day Nadir went hunting. Separated from his partners, he wandered about the jungle till it became night. There was still no sign of his companions. He didn’t know the way home. Finally he took the Lord’s name and started off in one direction, thinking that somewhere there would be some signs of a village or settlement. He would stay there the whole night and return in the morning. As he was walking, he glimpsed a village with barely three or four houses at the other end of the jungle. Oh yes, there was a masjid there as well. A lamp flickered in the masjid, but there was no sign of human habitation. It was well past midnight and it wasn’t right to disturb anyone. Nadir tied his horse to a tree and decided to spend the night in the masjid. A ragged mat lay there, and he dropped down on it. Exhausted by the day, he fell asleep the moment he lay down. Who knows how long he slept. Suddenly, startled by a sound, he woke up to find an old man sitting near him and offering namaz. Nadir was astonished to see someone offering namaz so late into the night. He had no idea that the night had passed by and it was the namaz of dawn. He continued to lie down and watch. The old man completed the namaz, then raised his hands in invocation. Listening to those words, Nadir’s blood ran cold. It was a sharp, genuine, constructive criticism of his reign, one that he had never heard before. He had been given the opportunity of hearing of his disrepute in his own lifetime. He knew that his reign was not exemplary but he had not imagined that the problems had become so intolerable. The invocation went like this:
‘Oh God! You alone are the saviour of the poor and the support of the needy. You can see this cruel emperor’s tyranny but your wrath has not struck him down. This faithless kafir is so enamoured by a beautiful woman that he has forgotten himself; he neither sees with his eyes nor hears with his ears. When he sees, it is through the eyes of that woman, when he hears it is through her ears. This hardship can no longer be borne. Either you send this bully to hell or take us needy people away from this world. Iran is fed up of this oppression and you alone can save her from this calamity.’
The old man picked up his staff and walked away but Nadir lay there like a dead man, as if he’d been struck by lightning.
10
For one week Nadir did not go to the durbar, nor did he allow any official to come near him. Day after day he stayed inside and wondered what he could do. Just as a token he would eat something. Laila would go to him every now and then and, sometimes with his head upon her lap or her arms clasped about his neck, ask, ‘Why are you so sad and worried?’ Nadir would look at her and weep but would not utter a word. The people’s respect or Laila, this was the tough choice before him.
A fierce battle raged in his heart and he could resolve nothing. Fame was sweet but Laila sweeter. He could live with infamy but he could not imagine life without Laila. Laila pervaded every pore of his being.
Finally he decided—Laila is mine, I am Laila’s. Neither of us can bear to be separated from the other. Whatever she does I own, whatever I do she owns. Is there any difference between what is mine and what is hers? Monarchy is mortal, love, immortal. We will be together till eternity and experience the bliss of paradise. Our love will remain like a star in the sky till the end of time.
Nadir arose with happiness. His face was aglow with the light of triumph. His eyes brimmed over with valour. He was going to drink from the cup of love for Laila, the cup he had not brought to his lips for a week. His heart leapt with the same joy that had bubbled
five years ago. The flowers of love never wilt, the elation never fades.
But the doors of Laila’s sleeping chamber were shut and her tambourine that always hung on a nail outside her door was missing. Nadir’s heart skipped a beat. The closed doors probably meant that Laila was in the garden, but where had the tambourine gone? Maybe she had taken the tambourine along to the garden, but why was there a pall of gloom? Why does this yearning overwhelm me?
Nadir opened the doors with trembling hands. Laila was not there. The bed had been made, tapers had been lit, the water for ablutions was there. Nadir’s legs shook. Had Laila not even slept there at night? Each and every object in the room carried Laila’s memory, her stamp, her fragrance, but Laila was not there. The house seemed desolate, like unseeing eyes.
Nadir’s heart brimmed over. He could not muster the courage to question anyone. His heart was torn apart. Like an insensate he sat on the floor and wept inconsolably. When his tears stopped he sniffed the bed so that perhaps some palpable smell of Laila would arise, but save for the odour of musk and rose, there was no other fragrance.
Suddenly he saw a fragment of paper sticking out from beneath the pillow. With one hand on his breast he drew out the fragment and looked at it with wary eyes. At a glance he understood everything. It was the verdict of Nadir’s destiny. Nadir cried aloud, ‘Oh Laila!’ And he fell upon the floor senseless. Laila had written—
My beloved Nadir, your Laila is going away from you forever. Don’t try to look for me, you will find no clue. I was a slave of your love, not hungry for your crown. For the last one week I have observed that your gaze looks elsewhere. You don’t talk to me, don’t lift up your eyes to look at me. You seem to have tired of me—you cannot imagine the desires with which I go to you, and how forlorn I return. I have done nothing to deserve such a punishment. Whatever I have done is only with your welfare in mind. I have spent an entire week weeping. I have begun to feel that I have now fallen in your eyes, been banished from your heart. Aah! These five years will always be remembered, will always torment me! I brought this tambourine with me when I came, I’m now taking it away with me. After enjoying the pleasures of love for five years, I now leave branded with a yearning for life. Laila was a slave to love; when love no longer remains, then why should Laila? Farewell!
Translated from the Hindi by Swati Pal
1 By Umashankar Joshi, himself a Jnanpith Award–winning Gujarati writer and then president of the Sahitya Akademi, in a speech delivered on 31 July 1980 at the FICCI Auditorium, New Delhi.
2 Namwar Singh, Premchand aur Bharatiya Samaj [in Hindi: Premchand and Indian Society] (New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan, 2010), p.113. (My translation)
3 See Amrit Rai, Premchand: A Life, tr. from the Hindi by Harish Trivedi (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1982).
4 Quoted in Rai, Premchand, p. 74.
5 Quoted in Rai, Premchand, p. 104. For a fuller discussion, see Harish Trivedi, ‘The Urdu Premchand, the Hindi Premchand’ (1984); reprinted in Literary Culture and Translation: New Aspects of Comparative Literature, eds. Dorothy M. Figueira and Chandra Mohan (New Delhi: Primus, 2017).
6 For dates and titles of Urdu and Hindi publications of Premchand I have throughout followed Kamal Kishore Goyanka, Premchand ki Kahaniyon ka Kalkramaanusar Adhyayan [in Hindi; Premchand’s Short Stories: A Chronological Study], (Delhi: Nataraj Prakashan, 2012), pp. 108–94.
7 John Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817, www.john-keats.com/briefe/221117.htm, accessed 8 November 2017.
8 Premchand, ‘Kahani-1’ (The Short Story-1) and ‘Upanyas’ (The Novel), both in Kuchh Vichar: Sahitya aur Bhasha Sambandhi [in Hindi: Some Thoughts on Literature and Language] (Allahabad: Saraswati Press, 1973), pp. 38–50.
9 Edward Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature against the Grain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006).
10 Both the stories are collected in Premchand, Kafan [in Hindi: The Shroud] (Allahabad: Hans Prakashan, 1973), pp. 32–47, 79–95.
11 M. Asaduddin, ‘Premchand in English Translation: The Story of an “Afterlife”’, in Premchand in World Languages: Translation, Reception and Cinematic Representations, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Routledge, 2016), pp. 40–41.
12 Harish Trivedi, ‘Premchand in English: One Translation, Two Originals’, in Premchand in World Languages, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Routledge, 2016), pp. 15–39.
1 Harish Trivedi, ‘Premchand’s Art, the Purpose of Literature, and the Urdu–Hindi Middle Ground’, the Sixth Munshi Premchand Memorial Lecture delivered under the aegis of the Premchand Archive and Literary Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, 26 August 2015 (New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia Premchand Archive and Literary Centre, 2016), p. 7.
2 The Urdu journals include Zamana, Hamdard, Tahzeeb-e Niswaan, Kahkashan, Azad, Khateeb, Adeeb, Subh-e Ummeed, Baharistan, Shabab-e Urdu, Nuqqad, and Al-Nazeer, among others. The Hindi journals include Madhuri, Navnidhi, Saraswati, Bharatendu, Vishal Bharat, Mansarovar, Chand, Jagaran, Hans, Prema, Prabha, Swadesh, Srisharda, Luxmi, Maryada, Aaj, Veena, Matwala, Usha, Gyanshakti Patrika and Sahitya Samalochak, among others.
3 In establishing chronology, I have benefited from the works of four Premchand scholars: Madan Gopal, Jafar Raza, Kamal Kishore Goyanka and Azimushshan Siddiqui. In addition, the Zamana archive at the Zakir Husain Library, Jamia Millia Islamia, was of great help. Unlike Tagore, who dated each of his manuscripts meticulously, Premchand was not very particular about either dating or preserving his manuscripts. In the absence of original manuscripts, it is very difficult to establish the date of first composition and the version—Hindi or Urdu—unless there is reliable corroborative evidence available, as it is with a story like ‘Kafan’. What, however, can be established from different sources is the first date of publication, which does not accurately indicate the date of composition. Thus, the chronology that has been worked out for this anthology indicates the date of publication and the version, Hindi or Urdu, in which the story was first published.
4 ‘Premchand ki Afsana Nigari’, Zamana: Premchand Issue, February 1938; rpt. National Council for Promotion of Urdu (New Delhi, 2002), p. 173.
5 ‘. . . He was also one of those who almost always took up social and political issues as central themes in his novels, stories, and plays. He was extremely sensitive to the political and social movements of his times and considered literature to be a potent medium for carrying, critiquing and analyzing prevalent ideas.’ Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay, ‘Representing the Underdogs: Dalits in the Literature of Premchand’, Studies in History, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Sage Publications, 2002).
6 ‘In a letter, he told Nigam that sometimes he followed the style of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, and at others, that of Shams-ul-Ulema Azad Dehlavi. These days, Premchand added, “I have been reading the stories of Count Tolstoy, and I must admit that I have been deeply influenced by them.”’ Madan Gopal, Munshi Premchand: A Literary Biography (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1964), p. 98.
7 Gordon C. Roadarmel, The Gift of a Cow: A Translation of the Classic Novel Godaan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. vi.
8 Amrit Rai (ed.), Vividh Prasang, Vol. III (Allahabad, 1978), pp. 249–50.
9 Geetanjali Pandey deals with Premchand’s complex response to women’s status in his fiction and non-fiction in her article, ‘How Equal? Women in Premchand’s Writings’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 21, No. 50 (Delhi: 13 December 1986), pp. 2183–2187. For additional insights, see Charu Gupta, ‘Portrayal of Women in Premchand’s Stories: A Critique’, Social Scientist, Vol. 19, No. 5/6 (May–June, 1991), pp. 88–113.
10 ‘I am Chitra. No goddess to be worshipped/Nor yet the object of common pity/to be brushed aside like a moth with indifference/If you deign to keep me by your side/in the path of danger and daring/If you allow me to share the great duties/of your life/Then you will know my true self.’ Sisir Kumar Das (ed), English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2004), cited in Malashri Lal, Tagore and the Feminine: A Jour
ney in Translations (New Delhi: Sage, 2015), 181.
11 ‘Dhikkar’ and ‘Naagpooja’. In ‘Family Break-up’, ‘Mistress of the House’ and ‘Subhagi’ there is just the hint of a widow marriage at the end of the story.
12 Shailendra Kumar Singh, ‘Premchand’s Prose of Counter-Insurgency in Colonial North India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2016.
13 A trenchant critique of this idyll has been provided in postcolonial India by Srilal Shukla in his Hindi novel, Raag Darbari (1968).
14 First published in the Hindi journal Pratap (December 1925); reprinted in India Today Sahitya Varshiki (India Today Literary Annual, 1995).
15 Alok Rai and Mushtaq Ali (eds.), Samaksh: Premchand ki Bees Urdu–Hindi Kahaniyon ka Samantar Paath (op cit.) and Kamal Kishore Goyanka in Premchand ki Hindi–Urdu Kahaniyaan, second edition, (Delhi: Prabhat Prakashan, 2017) have drawn attention to this aspect by reading several stories in both the versions. However, this is still a work in progress. They have left out several stories from the ambit of discussions, as has been demonstrated in the Notes sections in the four volumes of this anthology. This anthology seeks to fill that gap. Now that the raw data has been made available, a new impetus in research in this area is expected.
16 Amrit Rai (ed.) (in Hindi: ‘Prastutkarta’ [Presenter], ‘Gupt Dhan’ [Hidden Treasure]; Premchand (Allahabad: Hans Prakashan, 1962), p. 6.
17 I am indebted to Harish Trivedi for this idea expressed in his essay, ‘The Urdu Premchand, The Hindi Premchand’, The Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature (1984), pp. 22–115.
18 Letter to Imtiaz Ali Taj, 25 December 1919.
19 The Hindi original is as follows: ‘Aisa lagta hai ke kai baatein Hindi mein zyada swabhavik dhang se kahi ja sakti hai, aur koi Urdu mein. Is pratyaksh anubhav ki jad mein kya kya chhupa hua hai—itihaas, sanskritik-samajik purvagraha, sahityik parampara—ye shod ka vishay ho sakta hai.’ Alok Rai and Mushtaq Ali (eds), Samaksh: Premchand ki Bees Urdu–Hindi Kahaniyon ka Samantar Paath (Allahabad: Hans Prakashan, 2002), p. ii.